Physics Flashlets

This is a collection of Flash animations to make learning
physics easier! They were created by myself and my students Jacquie Hui Wan
Ching and Heather Welch, and Michael Timmins and Aris
Stylianopoulos, in the summer of 2003.

Newton's Mountain: Newton imagined shooting a
cannonball horizontally from a mountaintop above the atmosphere. With sufficient speed, it would circle the Earth..

Earth-Mars Line of Sight in Two Models. Viewing the motion of Mars against the starry background: How
the Ptolemy model and the Copernicus model predict the same direction, hence the same path. (We slightly simplify--taking both models in the circular orbit approximation,
as portrayed in Copernicus' illustration.

Galileo's "Compound Motion": Galileo realized that
the motion of a projectile was a compound of constant speed horizontal motion and constant acceleration vertical motion
-- we give an animation of his diagram.

Trip to Mars!: Try your skill at shooting a probe
from the Earth to a close encounter with the Red planet.

Jupiter Slingshot Find
out for yourself how a gravitational boost from a moving planet can get you to
the far reaches of the Solar System.